Dreams, drawings and psychoanalytic fun

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Tag Archives: dream about workplace

For my day-job, I rent workspace, and one place I worked has recently closed down. Not particularly a problem, because I was hardly ever there anyway, and there are other places I can work from, but I did like the manager there. He was a gentle, unassuming middle-class hippie who I imagine trying to balance yurt-living with academia.

Last night I dreamt he was repurposing the space to hold soirees where people came to play music, exhibit art, smoke the pipe and almost certainly have orgies. I was just a little offended that he didn’t think my business would fit in with that.

But then dead bodies – naked ones, I think – started turning up in the city. They were dumped just beyond the edges of my parents’ cul-de-sac (which as you may know, is in an entirely different part of the country from where I live), and I think my mum and I discovered them together.

Whatever point my subconscious mind was trying to make recently with this dream, it obviously feels I haven’t got it yet. (Fair enough, I haven’t. There was so much going on in the moonlight dream that I could be mulling it over for months.)

What recurring themes have you noticed in your dreams? Do you have dreams that recur every so often, over many years (like the one where your exams are tomorrow, and your revision notes have turned into a shoe)? Or, as I’m having currently, a cluster of similar-feeling dreams happening over a few weeks or months? Let me know in the comments!

Oh, and please do subscribe to this site so that I can update you on the next unlikely killing spree.

Induction day for my MSc course, although the building it was in was a cross between the sixth form block at my school, and an NHS outpatients’ centre I once worked at as a secretary. My Dad drove me there although it was only a few miles down the road. It was in an uninspiring suburb of the city, surrounded by a large car park. The main road there was congested. I was the last to arrive and the other students were already settled at long trestle tables and were eating from a buffet.

Surrounded by 18-20 year olds who first assumed I was a similar age and reacted with unflattering surprise to finding out how old I actually am, I felt embarassed that my career isn’t further along. I felt they were looking at me thinking they would be mortified to be in my position at my age.

We were directed to play ice-breaking / team-building games outdoors on the back lawn. It was a sunny day, and I loitered by the outer edges, feeling out-of-place and looked down upon. I felt I may have made the wrong decision in coming back to university, not only because I was out-youthed, but that the course was too basic and not covering my real interests. I couldn’t show those around me my strengths, and the experiences I had – which my coursemates didn’t – were not recognised.

wtf, subconscious?

Well, this one doesn’t need much interpretation. The insecurities that crop up here are real and self-explanatory, albeit not as prominent in my conscious mind as in this dream.

My dad would drive me to university if I had to move away for it – although in the dream, the campus was only a short bus ride away, and in reality, though it will involve a bit of a commute, I’ve no intentions of moving out of my current house. I see the being-driven as a metaphor for the help that my dad – a lecturer at another university – is helping me in getting back to academia.

The symbol of being on a busy, congested or slow journey is a common one in people’s dreams. Easy enough to see the analogy. In this case, I also had a sense of guilt that my dad was putting himself out, when I could have made my own way to campus and in fact probably would have got there more easily.

It’s only as I’m writing these dreams up that I’m seeing the links that my subconscious mind makes between different times of my life, and how they affect me now. The locations – sixth form, and my former workplace – tell me that I’m still feeling sore about being underestimated, undermined or unrecognised in those places.

As for the buffet, we could explore the symbolic meaning of food – nourishment and all that – but I dunno, I’m happy enough to say that I just fricking love food.